Asset manager and chartered accountant Sunil Shah didn't read the fine print when signing an agreemernt for the rental of a photocopy machine with a Sasfin-associated finance company. So a machine that was advertised on the internet for R7,500 ended up costing him R15,000 even though he delivered it back to the company after just three months. This is because of loopholes that allow these rental companies to side-step the National Credit Act. BizNews reports on how this happened.
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The 2016 local government elections offer a tantalising taste of what is to come in the 2019 presidential elections. The Democratic Alliance has promised it would become the dominant party by 2019, but to do that is a tough ask. The way to achieve this goal is to focus on reorganising Gauteng in the same way it did Cape Town, and create a model of governance that will peel away millions of voters from a decrepid ANC.
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Health minister Aaron Motsoaledi loves us so much he wants every South African to live cleaner, healthier lives. He plans to do this through plain packaging of cigarettes, one of the dumbest ideas ever concocted in the name of the nanny state. But government may be exposing itself to potential legal claims for destruction of trademarks, often a company's most valuable asset, while widespread counterfeiting of cigarettes is another likely consequence. And while we're about protecting the lives of South Africans, why not ban motor cars which kills thousands every year?
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Given recent statements by two former presidents, Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, one wonders whether these men will vote for the party of Nelson Mandela at all, or whether they wil abstain, or perhaps even vote for the opposition. Motlanthe was recently reported to have said the ANC is engaged in a race to the bottom. Strong words from the former leader of the country.
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A new poll by Ipsos shows the ANC losing its dominant position to the Democratic Alliance in next week's local government elections in three major urban centres: Joburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth. Cape Town has long since been under DA control. The ANC says its own polls come to a different conclusion. The trend is clear: the ANC will, like Zani-PF in Zimbabwe, from hereon have to rely on the rural vote.
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Half of South Africans between the ages of 18 and 24 are unemployed, not because they do not want to work, but because of labour laws that protect the employed aristocracy and actively discourage companies from hiring anybody new. Eustace Davie, director of the Free Market Foundation, offers a simple and inexpensive way of overcoming this barrier so that the country's youth can get a real taste of employment.
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A recent study of home repossessions puts SA among the worst - if not the worst - in the world. The enthusiasm with which SA banks rush to repossess homes in the event of default is described as "medieval" and cruel.
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Pastor Evan Mawarire has stirred the spirit of protest in Zimbabwe. Riots and protests now seem unstoppable as they spread from the cities to Beit Bridge border posts. The diplomatic community is warning of a possible military coup, and South Africa's shocking and corrupt support for the ruling party in past election frauds may come back to haunt it. Or perhaps this time, it will heed the voice of a young and restless population that has called for Mugabe to leave now, and make way for a change.
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Eight journalists have reportedly been fired by the SABC. This is a further sign of the deradation at the state-owned broadcaster, which is more and more looking like a State broadcaster along the lines of Zimbabwe or North Korea. The Institute of Race Relations looks at what is going on behind the scenes at the SABC board, which lies at the centre of this mess.
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Private investogator Paul O'Sullivan says he has been targeted for elimination by Radovan Krejcir, the East European gangster he helped put away. Wherever there is a smell of corruption, O'Sullivan gets on the case and does not hold back. Earlier this yer, while boarding a plane to London with his two daughters, he was arrested by agents of what he says is a corrupt State security machine, and held in a rat-infested Pretoria prison for several days. His latest disclosures are nuclear. SAA chairwoman Dudu Myeni, with no real qualification for the job, has been setting up deals that favour mysterious and wholly unqualified BEE businesses. Paul O'Sullivan talks to Alec Hogg.
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The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has threatened legal action against SAA should it proceed with a R15 billion refinancing of the airline using a boutique finance house, BnP Capital, which has no track record in a deal of this size or nature, and in fact had its Financial Services Board licence revoked. The board of SAA chose BnP over more credible financial institutions, and agreed to pay three times what other bidders were offering - all in the name of "transformation". Then SAA fired Cynthia Stimpel, the group treasurer, for objecting to this outrageous deal.
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Eddie Cross, the Movement for Democratic Change MP in Zimbabwe, says the country is at a crisis point similar to that of 2008 when the government abandoned the Zimbabwe dollar after inflation peaked at 500 million percent. A quarter of the country's children are orphans and the military is running the ruling party. A free election is now the only route out, argues Cross.
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The Northern Irish courts are quietly setting international precedent when it comes to securitisation and "double dipping" by the banks. Notice in this report how Santander Bank "destroyed" documents relevant to a claim being brought by the bank (just as Absa claims thousands of its documents were "destroyed" in a fire in 2009 so as to avoid presenting the originals in court). But in the Northern Irish case, the home owner moved to commit the CEO of Santander Bank and his "corrupt" officials and lawyers to prison for submitting a false claim toi the court.
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Two stories that suggest things are fast approaching a head in Zimbabwe. One involves riots over the number of police roadblocks travellers have to navigate as they try to make a living. It seems social protest independent of political party alliances is taking over the country. The second story involves a young Zimbabwean who told his president "F..k you" and landed himself in court. He also seemingly threatened President Mugabe's kids should anything happen to him.
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In this article Armand Rinier looks at how banks and other lenders are engaging in reckless lending. The practice is so common, it would require a book to cover all the creative ways banks are breaking the law. It's time to pull out your bank statements and see whether or not you are being gouged by the banks.
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Carte Blanche recently exposed the routine violations of human rights by the banks, which have repossessed more than 100,000 homes in South Africa since 1994. These homes are then sold at a fraction of their worth at sheriffs' auctions. As the programme points out, the Constitutional Court has already ruled on this, requiring the banks to use auctions as a "last resort" and to find creative alternatives to the sale in execution.
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Dudu Myeni, the chair of SAA, cares little for the solvency of the national air carrier, nor does she seem to give a damn about corporate governance. The SAA in-flight magazine goes into the minutiae of race-based bean counting, and as such appears to be written for staff rather than SAA passengers. The airline has been dubbed "Hollywood" since it has "acting" rather than permanent postings for virtually all key appointments. SAA is one of the reasons SA's state-owned enterprises are dragging us to the brink of junk status.
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If every debtor served with a summons defended the action, it would choke the legal system and force the banks to come up with better solutions for customers who have difficulties in meeting their monthly payments. It's an actuarial fact that the average mortgage borrower will either default or settle the bond within seven years. Banks know this. Despite well-intentioned laws, lenders are engaging in reckless lending on a daily basis. In this regular weekly column, Debt Nurse Armand Rinier will explain how to effectively protect your rights and assets when under threat from the banks.
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In this article, Rex van Schalkwyk, a former Supreme Court judge, points out several instances where senior politicians and government officials stomped all over the Constitution, not to mention common law standards of fraud, and got away with it. Instead of being held to the same standard as the rest of us, they abusers were sheltered by their political bretheren.
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Michael Gray has brought out a documentary The Banker Suicides, questioning whether the dozens of banker "suicides" since 2007 were actually suicides, whether they were stress-related, or was there something more sinister afoot. In several of these suicides, there are common threads and connections that went previously undetected.
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A young Joburg couple ended up losing two houses after falling R17,500 in arrears on a copier machine they were renting. The Kromers knew nothing of the law when all this was going down, but now they are angry - and fighting back. Had they known at the time what they know now, they would have immediately defended the matter and leaned on the Constitutional prohibition on arbitrary deprivation of property. They would also have invoked the Conventional Penalties Act, which prevents a creditor making a claim such as this out of all proportion to the prejudice suffered.
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Lawyers are raking in fees from the blizzard of summonses issued by the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) over the non-payment of e-tolls. The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA), which is fighting e-tolls, has its own legal team to defend the summonses, and has brought in one of the top legal minds in the country, Gilbert Marcus SC, to prepare for the court battle that lies ahead. This is likely to drag out for years, and could clog the court system.
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It's official. We are in an election and nearly 3m new voters have registered. Gareth van Onselen crunches the numbers, and suggests it doesn't look good for the ANC. It's unlikely it will win the 60% it claimed in the last election, but much depends on the energy of the opposition in these last few months before voting.
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A forensic scientist is planning to bring a class action suit against FNB over its systemic failure to represent its clients' interests on online banking fraud cases. The trigger for this was an attempt by FNB to reach a partial rather than a full settlement of a client's claim that R300,000 was stolen out of her account. FNB attempted to push at least some of the blame on the client.
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